


Some Adventures of Rodney McKay, Phd

by Rinkafic



Series: Misc Stargate [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 13:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinkafic/pseuds/Rinkafic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's a compilation of several stories focusing on Rodney McKay.</p><p>You are free to wear your McShep slash goggles if you like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Adventures of Rodney McKay, Phd

_I felt I should notate that this first piece is the first Stargate fanfic that I ever wrote._  
 **Sheppard Always Comes**  
The pain wasn't quite so bad, so long as he didn't let himself focus on it. Not an easy task, distracting his brain, but the pain really sucked, so he did some breathing exercises Teyla had taught him during training sessions and tried to ignore the fact that he was trapped, pinned and quite likely bleeding to death. 

Besides, Sheppard would find him. Sheppard wouldn't leave a man behind; it was his personal mantra.

There was a buckle digging into his chest. The one Sheppard had tightened when he'd checked over his tac vest in the locker room before the mission. "Can't make that much tighter, buddy, think you'll need a new one soon."

"It's all the running for our lives and training with Ronan and the damned jogging you've got me doing three times a week at ungodly hours." Rodney replied as he looked down and watched Sheppard's capable fingers as they snugged tight each of the straps, slid the buckles home and finished with a firm, friendly pat of his palm on Rodney's chest, over that last buckle, the one that was now digging into his sternum.

Sheppard would come. He always came.

His radio was busted; he'd landed on that shoulder when he tumbled down into the ravine. The shoulder was probably busted too. The team would be trying to radio him, every few minutes; one of his teammates would be trying. By now, Sheppard had abandoned proper protocols and was simply repeating, "Dammit, McKay, answer me!"

Face down under a pile of mud, branches and rocks, his chest compressed, Rodney couldn't catch enough of a breath to shout. Not that anyone could hear him over the rain, the same rain that had caused the path at the top of the ravine to wash out under their feet. But Sheppard had a life signs detector in the pocket of his tac vest, standard equipment for the Colonel. By now Sheppard was sweeping the area for the little blip that meant Rodney was here under half the mountainside, waiting for him to come. 

Sheppard would have called to the guard they had left on the gate to dial back to Atlantis for a rescue team by now. More people to help search, people with ropes, and blankets and stretchers and morphine. Maybe even a thermos of hot coffee. Jumpers couldn't land here, the terrain was too uneven and unstable, hence the hike in the rain in the first place. Rescue teams would be on foot. His team had been hiking nearly an hour. How long had he been blacked out? Had it been an hour? He tried to wriggle free again, causing a wave of pain from shoulder to shin. 'Bad idea. Stay still.' 

Was the debris blocking his life sign signal? He strained to hear over the patter of rain, listening for his team, they would be calling for him, carefully leaning over the edge of the ravine. He took comfort in knowing they would be searching. There was no doubt in his mind; Sheppard would come. 

Cold. Wet. Pain. 

He must have blacked out again. Couldn't jerk awake from a spasm of pain, otherwise. Where was Sheppard? This was taking too long. 

An hour to the gate, they had been treading carefully, slowly, because of the wet, slick dirt path. Marines on a mission made better time. Sheppard intent on a rescue made better time. The team had slowed their pace to match Rodney, in the middle, with Teyla at his back and Ronan on their six, the way they usually hiked, following Sheppard. 

He had been following Sheppard. 

Oh, God. 

He had been following Sheppard. 

And the path had gone out from under the Colonel. One moment he'd been there, the next, he'd been gone, and the moment after that, the path had gone out from under Rodney as well, and he had been tumbling, falling, skidding on his back down into the ravine, part of the landslide. The last thing he heard before the roar of the mudslide had drowned out everything else had been Teyla's screaming of his name. 

Sheppard had gone down first. Rodney sobbed once, quietly, before blackness overtook him, Sheppard wasn't coming. Not this time. 

 

A steady beeping above his shoulder annoyed Rodney into opening his eyes. He saw the pastel of the infirmary privacy curtains. His left wrist was wrapped in gauze. He couldn't feel his left shoulder, which indicated he'd been given the good stuff to dull the pain. He loved getting the good stuff. It dulled everything. All the hurt. It meant he didn't have to answer the questions he knew would come. No immediate debriefing. It was not time to remember seeing Sheppard fall yet. He closed his eyes and let himself float off.

 

"Rodney? Rodney. Rod-neee. C'mon wake up. I'm bored and my DS batteries are dead."

He grunted, waved his right hand in dismissal, and mumbled, "You forgot to recharge it again, didn't you?"

"Can I use your laptop? Zelenka left it when he was here before."

Good old reliable Zelenka the Smuggler. "Yeah, sure." Rodney tried to let the good stuff take him away again, but apparently, the good stuff had been discontinued, since he was now starting to feel the dull ache of his injuries. Wait. He jolted awake again. Sheppard?

Sheppard was splayed out in the visitor's chair beside his bed, tapping away at the keys on Rodney's laptop. The Colonel had numerous scratches and bruises showing on the skin not covered by infirmary issued scrubs, but otherwise seemed fine.

"You're not dead."

Sheppard looked up and smirked. "Neither are you. Took us a while to get to you, you slid all the way down a mountain." 

"You're not dead."

"Hit a tree, broke a rib." Sheppard casually waved a hand at his midsection. 

"You came for me."

"Of course I did."

"Of course you did. You always do." 

 

******************************  
 **Flashing Lights**  
A flashing light in front of his eyes made Rodney shy away. He squinted through the glare to see a blue-skinned alien watching him intently through wide eyes. “This is ridiculous. We’ve done this already! Stop, stop. Just, stop for a minute!” Rodney tried to pull back and away from the gloved hand of the alien ‘scientist” reaching for him, but he was held firmly in place by steel bands around his forehead, neck, chest, waist and calves. He called them scientists in his head because they seemed to be doing some kind of experiments, using what he recognized as scientific methods. 

“You remember the last time? Interesting. Most subjects do not recall the events.” 

“Listen, I’m very important in the city. They are going to be looking for me, someone is going to come to find me.”

The alien tilted his head and stared at Rodney. “As you have said. Repeatedly. Please stop saying that.”

“I’ve said it once. Wait, no, I did say it before, didn’t I? What the heck is going on here? What kind of experiments are you doing? What are you doing to me?”

The alien turned to the other aliens working around the lab and said, in a high pitched voice, “Is this the best subject you could find? Why do I have to deal with it? It’s annoying. I want a new one.”

“We all want a new one,” the one that had a mustache like Groucho Marx said in a monotone.

“If you were first rate, you’d have your pick of subjects, but you are not. You will take what you get and do your best,” another alien, one that reminded Rodney of Bud Abbot said sharply. 

The Complainer turned back around and stuck a needle into Rodney’s arm. “Next time, try to be more cooperative.”

The world went black.

~*~

A flashing light in front of his eyes made Rodney shy back. He squinted through the glare to see a wide eyed alien staring at him intently. “Are you going to behave this time around?” the alien asked in a voice that really sounded as if the being was at the end of its patience. It held up a large syringe of red liquid in a threatening manner and Rodney clamped his mouth shut and nodded. That stuff burned. He remembered that from one of the other passes through this. 

“Finally. Your species is stubborn and slow to learn.”

“You have room to talk, you cut-rate excuses for researchers. Where’d your bosses find you, a back alley somewhere? I know animal trainers who could teach monkeys to do a better job than you’re doing here! No, no, wait, not the shot!”

Every nerve in his body burned and then the world went black.

~*~

“What’s with the flashing light?” Rodney asked, growing exhausted and listless. The Complainer lowered the syringe it was holding up in warning. “”Look at this, does it look the same as it did before?” It held a portable screen up in front of Rodney’s face. He had seen the image of moons over water before. 

He had learned to cooperate. If he mouthed off, Moe, Curly or Larry hurt him. If he cooperated, Costello fed him and let him sleep. They didn’t answer questions. Ever. 

“The moons are a different color. They used to be brighter, more blue,” he answered honestly. They had him hooked up to sensors, they knew if he was bullshitting them. They punished him for being insolent. 

Rodney had no idea where he was. He didn’t know if Atlantis was going to be able to find him, because he didn’t remember how he had gotten here. He was confused. Rodney hated being confused; it was a state that he absolutely despised. He wanted to go home. But whining about it would get him a red shot. 

Biting his tongue, he followed the orders of Laurel and Hardy, looking where they told him to look, answering the questions they asked him. They were basically the same questions they had asked him each time everything started over again. 

He wondered how long they had been doing this. He had lost track, if he had ever been keeping track.

~*~

The flashing light hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. “I think I’m going to puke,” he told The Complainer. 

Laurel ran over with a bucket and held it up. Rodney was relieved that he didn’t need to use it. “I’m okay.” The alien walked away, dropping the bucket. It clanked and rolled to land against a wall.

It had started to get harder to see the pictures. His vision was going bad. He couldn’t hear very well either. He was so tired. All he wanted to do was sleep. 

He didn’t answer quickly enough and they gave him the red shot. This time Rodney screamed with the pain of it. He screamed over and over again, until the blackness took him.

~*~

He hung loosely in the restraining clamps, too weak to even open his eyes and protest against the flashing light.

~*~

“Doctor McKay?” a familiar voice roused Rodney slightly. He opened his eyes, squinting instinctively against the expected flashing. But there was no flashing this time. He couldn’t keep his eyes open, it hurt. A hand touched his throat, feeling for a pulse. “Hang in there Doctor McKay, we’re going to get you out of there, we might have to cut you out of these things if Radek can’t find the release.”

“Lorne?” It hurt to talk. 

He felt hands running over him, checking him for injuries. “Yes, it’s Lorne. Sorry, it took us a while to find you.”

“How long?” Rodney rasped. They’d found him. Lorne would get him home. The Major was gently wrapping a bandage gently around Rodney’s eyes.

“Six days,” Lorne replied, patting Rodney’s arm.

“Where’s the Keystone Cops?”

“Doc? Who? I don’t understand.”

“The aliens? The ones that were holding me here.”

“Gone, Rodney,” Radek called from the other side of the room. “There is no one here, just you.”

He whispered, “Good.” And let the darkness take him.

~*~

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the Atlantis infirmary through a veil of gray. He had a pair of dark shades over his eyes, the kind you get after eye surgery. He touched a hand to them.

“Don’t take them off, Rodney, there’s some damage to your eyes that needs to heal. The light would hurt now.” Jennifer said, catching his wrist in her hand to prevent him from removing the glasses.

“They kept hitting me with flashing lights, over and over and over. They were doing some kind of tests, using some kind of time travel machine to keep starting the tests over.”

“You’re safe now, you need to rest and heal up.”

“Yeah. Safe.” 

He closed his eyes and slept.

~*~

When he woke, he was still in the infirmary, but Teyla and Ronon were sitting on one side of his bed, Sheppard on the other. His team, watching over him.

He breathed a sigh of relief. Time was different, it was moving forward. The nightmare was over.

*********************

 **An Old Fashioned Date Night**  
Rodney stood nervously outside the door to Katie’s quarters. She had asked him to arrive precisely at eight, and to dress in a suit and tie. He was instructed to bring flowers, chocolate and a bottle of wine. He felt ridiculous.

She opened the door and he blinked in surprise at her appearance. “Rodney, how lovely to see you! Do come in!” She stepped aside to let him pass.

He stepped inside and she went up on her tiptoes to give him a chaste kiss on the cheek. “Oh, are those for me? What a surprise!”

“But you said…” 

Katie cut him off, spinning away, which made her skirt flare out in a wide circle around her. Rodney eyed her from head to toe, taking in the costume; he thought he remembered seeing Cadman in it at the last Halloween party. “What’s with the…?” He gestured to the red poodle skirt, bobby sox and pink sweater. 

“Do you like it? I splurged a little with my rainy day money to get the skirt.” She twirled again, smiling up at him. He finally caught on that this was some kind of game. 

“I think it’s lovely, Katie. These are for you, sweetheart.” He offered the flowers and candy, kissing her on the cheek when she leaned in to take them. 

He must have done it right, she beamed a smile at him and then went to fuss over the flowers, and putting them in a vase of water she had ready at the center of the table. “So, what did you want to do tonight, dear?”

Moving to the desk, she picked up a thin red box he recognized as being from the Rec Room and gave it a shake and smiled hopefully. “Scrabble?”

He hated Scrabble, and Katie knew it. But this was some kind of fantasy of hers, so he played along. “If you like. Where is your corkscrew?” He held up the wine. If he had to put up with Scrabble, he was doing so with alcoholic reinforcement.

“Oh, Rodney, wine? Do we dare? We might get… frisky. And we’re all alone here, just the two of us.” Katie batted her eyelashes at him and handed him the corkscrew.

“I think we can risk it. Rack ‘em up, let’s have at it.” He pointed to the Scrabble box.

He lost. She gloated, clapping her hands in delight. Rodney felt like he was stuck in an episode of Happy Days with Katie and her bobby-soxer getup, ponytail and batting eyelashes. 

After the game, Rodney suggested they take their wine and sit on the couch. Katie agreed and set up her Ipod on a speaker stand on the desk, filling the room with soft music. 

“Now this is more like it.” Rodney said appreciatively as Katie dropped down on the couch beside him. Trying to keep up with the game he thought she was playing, he dropped an arm along the top of the sofa as he faked a yawn and then wrapped it around her. 

“Rodney!” She slapped his knee but did not remove his arm. 

He sipped his wine and listened to the music as she babbled on about the new plants in the nursery. 

Growing weary of the game, Rodney leaned over and kissed her to shut her up. She batted at his shoulders. When he let her go, she gasped, “Why, I never! Doctor McKay, you are so forward!”

“Should I leave?”

Breaking character for a moment, she shook her head minutely. “You must promise to behave yourself!”

“And if I don’t?”

Her jaw dropped open and she stammered, “Well… I… just… oh!”

He reached out and caught her, dragging her across his lap. “Miss Brown, didn’t you know I’m a wolf? You just aren’t safe around me!” He bent his head and started kissing her neck as she put up a mock protest, squirming in his lap, trying NOT to get loose. She was really enjoying it, her breath was coming in short little gasps.

Rodney raised his head and took in her flushed face and blown pupils. “I don’t know how much more teasing I can take from you, Miss Brown. You’re driving me a little mad.” He dropped his voice to a whisper and asked close to her ear, “How much more can you take?”

She wriggled out of his grasp and sat up, sliding off his lap and standing up so quickly his head spun. She held out a hand and tossed her ponytail in the direction of her bedroom. “I think that’s enough, come on!”

*****************************************

 _And then the remix of Flashing Lights:_  
 **Safe in My Kingdom**  
Some doors are just not meant to be stepped through. McKay knew that, but this time his hubris cost him dearly. The Atlantis expedition might acknowledge his genius, and in his mind he was the king of his city. But the city did not understand that, and seemed to constantly be trying to kill him in one way or another.

He should have waited for Sheppard and Ronon and Teyla to be available to check on the strange energy spikes he was getting from an unused building far out on one of the spokes. Sometimes, he forgot that he was not invincible. And that the city was actively trying to kill him.

Arriving at the door, Rodney swiped his hand over the release. Huffing in irritation when it did not open, he repeated the swipe. Rodney McKay did not screw around with malfunctioning sensors in his city. He yanked the cover off the control panel and rewired it. The door opened sluggishly, and only halfway. “Good enough,” he mumbled. With a smug nod of his head at the dismantled panel, taking petty satisfaction in his triumph over the door that had been opposing his will; he turned sideways and slid through.

He walked into what seemed to be a lab. He stopped, shocked to see people moving about. Someone turned and saw Rodney, then touched a panel behind them. He realized his mistake as he felt the tingling of an energy field envelop his body. He was blinded by light and he could not move. He heard the door swish shut behind him, but when he tried to turn to look at it, he found he couldn’t move.

Everything was hazy around him, seen through the shield that was holding him tight.

The clothing of the people approaching him was the same style as the few Ancients Rodney had seen in holograms. One of them raised a wrist and pointed a device strapped there at him.

His last thought before he lost consciousness was, “I forgot to tell them where I was going.”

~*~

A flashing light in front of his eyes made Rodney shy away. He squinted through the glare to see man watching him intently. “This is ridiculous. We’ve done this already! Stop, stop. Just, stop for a minute!” Rodney tried to pull back and away from the gloved hand of the ‘scientist” reaching for him, but he was held firmly in place by steel bands around his forehead, neck, chest, waist and calves. He called them scientists in his head because they seemed to be doing some kind of experiments, using what he recognized as scientific methods.

“You remember the last time? Interesting. Most subjects do not recall the events.”

Rodney looked around at the walls of Atlantis. He was still in the city, surely someone could find him? He might berate his scientists, but they really could be clever when pressed against the wall. Why hadn’t someone come to find him? This was unacceptable; he could not be a prisoner in his own city! “Listen, I’m very important in the city. I keep this place running. They are going to be looking for me; someone is going to come to find me.”

The man tilted his head and stared at Rodney. “As you have said. Repeatedly. Please stop saying that.”

“I’ve said it once. Wait, no, I did say it before, didn’t I? What the heck is going on here? What kind of experiments are you doing? What are you doing to me?”

The guy in the gold robe turned to the others working around the lab and said in a high pitched voice, “Is this the best subject you could lure in? Why do I have to deal with it? It’s annoying. I want a new one.”

“We all want a new one,” the one that had a mustache like Groucho Marx said in a monotone.

“If you were first rate, you’d have your pick of subjects, but you are not. You will take what you get and do your best,” the one that reminded Rodney of Bud Abbot said sharply.

The Complainer turned back around and stuck a needle into Rodney’s arm. “Next time, try to be more cooperative.”

The world went black.  
~*~

 

A flashing light in front of his eyes made Rodney shy back. He squinted through the glare to see brown eyes staring at him intently. “Are you going to behave this time around?” the man asked in a voice that really sounded as if he was at the end of its patience. He held up a large syringe of red liquid in a threatening manner and Rodney clamped his mouth shut and nodded. That stuff burned. He remembered that from one of the other passes through this.

“Finally. You are exceedingly stubborn and slow to learn.”

“You have room to talk, you cut-rate excuses for researchers. Where’d your bosses find you, a back alley somewhere? I know animal trainers who could teach monkeys to do a better job than you’re doing here! No, no, wait, not the shot!”

Every nerve in his body burned and then the world went black.

~*~

“What’s with the flashing light?” Rodney asked, growing exhausted and listless. The Complainer lowered the syringe it was holding up in warning. “”Look at this, does it look the same as it did before?” It held a portable screen up in front of Rodney’s face. He had seen the image of moons over water before.

He had learned to cooperate. If he mouthed off, Moe, Curly or Larry hurt him. If he cooperated, Costello fed him and let him sleep. They didn’t answer questions. Ever.

Nothing in this room responded to his artificial gene. His captors had remarked on the adaptation to his genetics and how it impacted the development of the species..

“The moons are a different color. They used to be brighter, more blue,” Rodney answered honestly. They had him hooked up to sensors, they knew if he was bullshitting them. They punished him for being insolent.

Rodney had no idea where he was in the city anymore. They had moved him. That was very odd, how could there be Ancients in the city and they had never picked them up on the sensors? He didn’t know if Atlantis was going to be able to find him, because he didn’t remember exactly how he had gotten here, or how long he had been here.  
He was confused. Rodney hated being confused; it was a state that he absolutely despised. He wanted to go home. But whining about it would get him a red shot.

Biting his tongue, he followed the orders of Laurel and Hardy, looking where they told him to look, answering the questions they asked him. They were basically the same questions they had asked him each time everything started over again.

He wondered how long they had been doing this. He had lost track, if he had ever been keeping track. Time had passed; there was an itchy growth of beard on his chin that he couldn’t scratch that let him know that.

~*~

 

The flashing light hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. “I think I’m going to puke,” he told The Complainer.

Laurel ran over with a fancy bucket and held it up. Rodney was relieved that he didn’t need to use it. “I’m okay.” The gawky guy walked away, dropping the bucket. It clanked and rolled to land against a wall.

It had started to get harder to see the pictures. His vision was going bad. He couldn’t hear very well either. He was so tired. All he wanted to do was sleep.

He didn’t answer quickly enough and they gave him the red shot. This time Rodney screamed with the pain of it. He screamed over and over again, until the blackness took him.

~*~

 

He hung loosely in the restraining clamps, too weak to even open his eyes and protest against the flashing light.

~*~

 

“Doctor McKay?” a familiar voice roused Rodney slightly. He opened his eyes, squinting instinctively against the expected flashing. But there was no flashing this time. He couldn’t keep his eyes open, it hurt. A hand touched his throat, feeling for a pulse. “Hang in there Doctor McKay, we’re going to get you out of there, we might have to cut you out of these things if Radek can’t find the release.”

“Lorne?” It hurt to talk.

He felt hands running over him, checking him for injuries. “Yes, it’s Lorne. Sorry, it took us a while to find you.”

“How long?” Rodney rasped. They’d found him. Lorne would get him home. The Major was gently wrapping a bandage around Rodney’s eyes.

“Six days,” Lorne replied, patting Rodney’s arm.

“Where’s the Keystone Cops?”

Lorne squeezed his arm. “Doc? Who? I don’t understand.”

“The guys that were holding me here.”

“Gone, Rodney,” Radek called from the other side of the room. “There is no one here, just you.”

He whispered hoarsely, “Good.” And let the darkness take him.

~*~

 

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the Atlantis infirmary through a veil of gray. He had a pair of dark shades over his eyes, the kind you get after eye surgery. He touched a hand to them.

“Don’t take them off, Rodney, there’s some damage to your eyes that needs to heal. The light would hurt now,” Jennifer said, gently capturing his wrist in her hand to prevent him from removing the glasses.

“They kept hitting me with flashing lights, over and over and over. They were doing some kind of tests, using some kind of time travel machine to keep starting the tests over.”

She smoothed his hair back. “You’re safe now, you need to rest and heal up.”

“Yeah. Safe.”

He closed his eyes and slept.

~*~

 

He woke again to see that Teyla and Ronon were sitting on one side of his bed, Sheppard on the other. His team was watching over him, as they would have done if he had not gone off on his own.

He breathed a sigh of relief. Time was different, it was moving forward. The nightmare was over. But Atlantis felt a bit less like his domain now. He no longer felt as safe as he once had, he was vulnerable. The city was a little more frightening.

And the Ancients had not all gone away forever, as he once believed.

 

****************************************

 

 **Blown Up, Sir!"**  
“What in the hell were you trying to accomplish with this plan, Doctor Kavanagh?” Elizabeth Weir, in a rare show of temper, slammed her hand down on her desk and glared at the three scientists standing in front of her desk. The action shook the ornate, decorative bottle that had been a gift from the Rashakin when their recent trade negotiations had been successfully concluded.

“I was trying to show that…”

McKay didn’t let him finish before cutting him off, “He was trying to show me up, Elizabeth. He cut corners and proceeded with an experiment without authorization.”

“And now Major Sheppard is in the infirmary in critical condition. This kind of thing cannot continue to happen,” Weir looked to Zelenka as McKay and Kavanagh glared at each other. “Radek, how long will your team need to repair the damages?”

“Two days, perhaps, Doctor Weir. So long as the changes to the computer system have been undone and we do not have a repeat of the incident.” Zelenka glared at Kavanagh.

“Please see to it, gentlemen,” Weir dismissed them without any further lectures.

As they walked out of the office, Rodney fell into step beside Radek. “I locked him out of the system; your team will be safe while they make the repairs. I’m going to the infirmary to check on Sheppard.”

The infirmary was eerily quiet when Rodney got there. His shoes squeaked on the floor and the noise was extremely loud, making him pause momentarily as he crossed the room to where Sheppard was. It was weird, seeing Sheppard all bandaged and wired up. He looked strangely helpless and young sleeping there. Rodney had come to rely on Sheppard being the one that took care of the team, seeing him broken like this was disconcerting.

He walked to the side of the bed and stared at the bloodstained bandage on Sheppard’s head. Beckett had mentioned skull fracture in the list of mumbo jumbo he had rattled off at the team earlier in the day. He had also said swelling and brain damage and critical condition and permanent, all voodoo words that filled Rodney with fear.

“Hey, Sheppard. You planning on waking up soon? You’re scaring the medical staff, and Elizabeth is really pissed. She’s putting the blame for this squarely on my shoulders, because I’m Kavanagh’s superior. So, you have to come out of this or I’m going to be in some real trouble here.” Rodney knew he could eventually bluster his way out of it, but he didn’t know what else to say to Sheppard, so it was a way of making conversation.

He touched his fingers to Sheppard’s hand, avoiding the IV tube, and Sheppard’s hand was slightly chilled. “It’s cold in here.” Looking around, Rodney saw a blanket folded up on a shelf and he picked it up and awkwardly spread it over his teammate.

Unsure what else to do, he sat on the edge of the chair and looked at all of the machines measuring Sheppard’s vital signs. “Are you dreaming? Do people with head trauma dream? I bet you’re dreaming of sexy alien women throwing themselves at you. Or maybe sports. A shame you don’t like hockey, then we’d have something to discuss. But no, you’re hung up on football,” Rodney had never bothered to hide his disdain for the sport.

“Just how broken are you, Sheppard? Please don’t be too broken. I was getting used to you the way you are. I’d hate to have to break in another gun wielding military guy at this point.”

“Shut up Rodney.”

“I mean really, I was getting comfortable with Ford and then he up and runs off. Training someone new will take too much… did you tell me to shut up?”

“Yeah, shut up,” Sheppard whispered raggedly.

Rodney leapt up from the chair and moved to the side of the bed. Sheppard’s eyes were fluttering and he looked pained. “You’re conscious?” The machines had started to beep in a different pattern, which probably meant something for Beckett.

Wincing, Sheppard tried to raise a hand to his forehead but was too uncoordinated; he ended up hitting his cheek and dropping the hand away. “Head hurts, shhh.”

“Well, you did get yourself blown up yesterday. Carson is coming now; he’ll do something for you.” Glancing over his shoulder, Rodney saw Beckett hurrying towards them.

“Blown up?”

“Kavanagh’s fault.”

Sheppard snorted lightly. “Figures. Anyone else?”

“No, just you, Mister I-Have-to-Lead-the-Charge-into-Danger.”

Beckett smiled as he took in the readings on the machines and started fussing with tubes and buttons, pushing Rodney out of the way and barraging Sheppard with questions. Sheppard was fading, and finally gave up the struggle to stay awake before Rodney could talk to him again.

Ushering him out, Beckett promised Rodney he could visit later. He reassured him that Sheppard was on the mend and it seemed the worst of his fears had not come to pass. The major seemed intact and the prognosis was much more positive than it had been.

Relieved, Rodney stared at his team leader for a few more moments before he turned to leave. He had a scientist to flay for this disaster. It was time to show Kavanagh who was in charge.

 

*********************************

 **Heat Stroke**  
Having never been prone to panic attacks, John was surprised to have had his first one while on vacation, of all things. 

“Well, I’m waiting for the fun to start, Sheppard, you promised me fun if I came along with you on this trip. Thus far, it is more like a mission gone wrong than a vacation.”

John figured Rodney must be feeling better, snark and complaint functions were once again operating within normal parameters. He passed Rodney a Yoo-Hoo he had grabbed from the hospital cafeteria. “We’ll have fun, as soon as the doctor says you can leave.”

“No more sun,” Rodney said with warning. 

Sheppard snorted. “Right, like I’d take you back out there after today.” He might never take Rodney outside again.

“I’m not a wuss,” Rodney said, sipping his drink. 

“No one said you were, Rodney.” John was the wuss. He was the one that had freaked out and had to ride over in the ambulance with an oxygen mask while the paramedics worked on Rodney.

“It was the humidity that did it.”

Pulling over the single chair in the little ER cubby, John perched on the edge and stared at Rodney, making his own assessment of his friend’s condition. He was a little pink, sunburned despite his SPF 150 lotion. But his eyes were no longer rolling in his head and he was breathing normally. The heart rate monitor blipping away beside the bed showed a normal rhythm. What John had feared was a heart attack had turned out to be a case of heat stroke. But he hadn’t known that at the time, the threat to McKay’s health had seemed real.

And John had lost it. He had thrown up in the parking lot when the ambulance arrived and the professionals took over Rodney’s care. 

“How about we skip the hiking and hang out at the indoor water park tomorrow?” John suggested.

Rodney looked at him hopefully. “Tube slides?”

“Of course.”

“There will be a ton of kids there,” Rodney declared with a frown and resumed sucking on his straw. 

“Not too many, it won’t be that crowded, it’s still off-season and mid-week. And if there are kids, I’ll fend them off for you, Rodney.”

“You would?”

“Of course I would. I want you to enjoy the vacation, Rodney.” 

“Can we try that steakhouse we saw?” McKay asked hopefully.

“Yup. I wasn’t sure you’d be hungry.” John wasn’t really hungry, but if Rodney was, he’d take him wherever he wanted to go. 

Setting aside his empty bottle, Rodney nodded. “I‘m getting hungry now, the nausea and headache are subsiding. So what else do you have planned, beside the water park?”

“Philharmonic?”

Rodney eyed him skeptically. “You’d sit through the symphony?”

“Sure.”

Now McKay was staring at him. “I scared you, didn’t I? When I passed out.” 

John nodded. “Yeah. You were convulsing and your pulse was racing, I thought you were having a heart attack on me.” McKay had been out of it, he’d missed John’s little freak out.

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault. I should have checked the weather and not kept us out in the sun so long.”

“You were having so much fun surfing, I didn’t want to go back to the hotel.” 

Frowning at Rodney, John shook his head. “Not that much fun, I wish you would have tried it.”

“Then we’d be in here getting broken bits of my body plastered up, or maybe having the water drained out of my lungs. Here comes the nurse, ask her if I can leave.”

Relieved that Rodney seemed back to normal, John flagged down the nurse, who said she’d have to get a doctor to release him. 

Rodney spent the rest of the time in the ER regaling John with tales of other trips to the hospital he’d taken in his life. By the time they left, John was ready to bundle Rodney in bubble wrap to keep him safe, but that might get him overheated again, so John abandoned the idea.


End file.
